Energy

Energy

The energy market consists of buyers and sellers of electricity, coal, countless types of fossil fuels and numerous sources of renewable energy. The prices of different fuels are constantly fluctuating based on the total demand from large corporations and groups of thousands of individual customers, and political situations, such as the blockage of a key shipping lane or economic sanctions, can tremendously affect the costs of certain types of energy.

In recent years, regulation of the energy markets has increased substantially in most countries. Certain organizations, such as the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States and the Energy Market Authority in Singapore, have created comprehensive lists of practices and intricate safety procedures that energy companies must follow.

Electricity

Most power plants use numerous spinning generators to produce electricity, and these generators can be powered by harnessing numerous other sources of energy, such as radiation from the sun, hydroelectric turbines, energy from the wind, natural gas and coal that is used to make steam.

Once electricity is released into the grid and into high voltage power lines, it can not be stored indefinitely. Instead, electricity is allowed to circulate continuously in large regional grids that use alternating current, and when electricity flows into a person’s home, only some of it is used while the unused portion is sent back to the grid.

Large grids are constructed by using steel, aluminum and copper, which are all highly conductive metals. Regulator banks are placed in key locations within the grid, and these machines provide automatic feedback to the power plant that can lower or raise the amount of electricity that is being sent to a certain region of the grid.

Natural Gas And Oil

Oil and natural gas account for 24 percent of the raw materials that are used to generate electricity in the United States. The natural gas is burned at a steady rate, and its combustion causes a massive turbine, which is made of steel, to turn rapidly in order to generate electric power.

Hydroelectric Power

Many regions have large damns that concentrate the flow of water into man-made rivers that contain immense turbines that generate electricity.

Wind

Wind is the only natural resource that produces electricity in one step, and as large, steel windmills are spun by natural gusts, electricity is pumped through the ground by a series of wires to faraway power plants and grids.

Solar Power

Although a person can harness the power of our star by placing several solar panels on a roof, large fields filled with solar panels are required to provide electricity for entire cities.

In order to store enough power for the night, engineers must place additional grids near each power plant that runs on solar energy and automatically divert half of the power that is produced to these storage grids.